About ICAC

The International Certification Accreditation Council (ICAC) is an alliance of organizations dedicated to assuring competency, professional management, and service to the public by encouraging and setting standards for licensing, certification, and credentialing programs.

In 1996, a group of association executives chartered the ICAC as a not-for-profit organization with the purpose of evaluating certification programs at a reasonable rate that smaller organizations can afford. Over the years the ICAC has developed a comprehensive process to evaluate certification programs against international standards. In this way, accredited organizations can both improve existing certification programs as well as demonstrate to the public that their programs comply with industry best practices.

By accrediting certification programs, the public and the industries represented have an additional level of assurance, knowing that the program has been reviewed by a neutral third party and been found to meet or exceed reasonable levels of record keeping, security, objectivity, and professionalism.

ICAC Adheres to ISO/IEC 17011 Standard

The ICAC itself operates under the international guidelines established as a quality assurance regime for accreditation bodies (ISO/IEC 17011 – Conformity Assessment: General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies), and has established assessment tools and processes that assure certification bodies are in compliance with ISO/IEC 17024 (2012): Conformity Assessment – General Requirements for Bodies Operating Certification of Persons.

Members of the ICAC Board of Directors and its various committees are volunteers who draw from many years of experience in managing not-for-profit organizations.

Members Comply with Strict Conflict of Interest Policy

Since many of the members work for or represent organizations accredited by ICAC, a comprehensive and strictly enforced conflict of interest policy has been adopted and each board/committee member must sign it annually. No member may seek to influence any assessments, votes or discussions pertaining to the accreditation of any certification programs developed by, owned, or operated by any organization with which they are affiliated (either as a staff member, former staff member, committee member, board member or otherwise).